The Secrets and Lies of Joe Paterno

His final season began with wins—lots of them—and for a while it seemed as if he might retire at the top of his sport, an unblemished icon. It ended with TV cameras surrounding his house, a dying old man at his kitchen table writing a forced letter of resignation—and leaving the rest of us to wonder if we ever really knew Joe Pa at all. An exclusive excerpt from a new biography

Editor’s Note: In the summer of 2011, Penn State football coach Joe Paterno allowed the journalist Joe Posnanski, then a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, to join him in State College, Pennsylvania, to spend the upcoming season writing his biography. This afforded Posnanski access to Paterno and his inner circle as the Jerry Sandusky scandal engulfed the campus and the nation. What follows is the story of Paterno’s final days as head coach, and of how he presented himself to his family and intimates during that period. The Freeh report—former FBI director Louis Freeh’s July 2012 inquiry on behalf of the Penn State board of trustees into why Sandusky’s crimes were not reported earlier by Paterno and other senior university officials—is addressed elsewhere in Posnanski’s biography and adds vital new information to the recollections in this excerpt. As a result, GQ has inserted footnotes at various points to contextualize facts that had not yet come to light at the time.

Joe Paterno began the last football preseason of his life feeling great. Anyway, that’s what he told himself. During the previous two seasons he had been ill and looked gaunt; now he had the strength to walk again, and he walked all over State College. People spotted him miles from his home. "You need a ride, Joe?" they would shout through the car window, and he would wave his hand, smile, and keep walking, as he had as a young man, focusing on the road ahead. He was 84 years old, but he announced to anyone who would listen that he had not felt this good in years.

Television cameras surrounded the Paterno house on McKee Street.

Later he would tell friends and family that he knew, even then, that this would be his last year as a coach. But he mostly kept such thoughts to himself. First, it was nobody’s business. Second, the last thing in the world Paterno wanted was one of those "We’ll Miss You, Joe" celebrations that he called a "living funeral." Third, he wanted the freedom to change his mind. He would joke, using a line he said was from Tennessee Williams: "I knew no one was immortal, but I thought I was the exception."

The 2011 season was an odd one even before the tragic ending. Although the team kept winning, there was intense and persistent criticism of Paterno and his unwillingness to retire. There was something surreal about that. Coaches who win football games do not usually have people calling for them to step down, and after nine games Penn State was 8-1, their only loss to an Alabama team that would win the national championship. They were undefeated in the Big Ten. In December, Penn State won the Academic Bowl for scholastic excellence among the best football programs in the nation.

Still, the calls for Paterno to step down were widespread and fierce. It was true that Paterno seemed out of sorts. He coached from the press box because of an injury, and he hated it; he did not even have time to go down and speak to his team at halftime. He was less available and less forthcoming than ever. Reporters who had long felt slighted pushed back. "It probably shouldn’t be this way," one told me. "But I think everybody just wants something to change. It’s been the same here for so long that Joe’s sick of us, we’re sick of him. It would be nice to just move on to something new."

When Penn State beat Illinois on October 29, it was Paterno’s 409th victory as a coach. He already had the record for Division I-A so this wasn’t exactly a record. But he had passed Grambling’s Eddie Robinson for the top spot on the Division I list for victories. It wasn’t an official record, but it gave Penn State the opportunity to celebrate Paterno one more time.1 President Graham Spanier and athletic director Tim Curley showed up to give him a plaque. Paterno sounded tired. The reporters’ questions sounded tired too. It wasn’t much of a celebration.

Nobody knew it then, but that was the last game Joe Paterno would coach.

1.In late July 2012, the NCAA announced that its punishment of Penn State for the Sandusky scandal would include the vacating of all wins by the football program dating back to 1998. As a result, Paterno no longer holds either of these lifetime coaching records; officially, he now ranks twelfth in Division I.

Scott Paterno was the first in the family to understand that the Pennsylvania grand jury presentment that indicted Jerry Sandusky could end his father’s career. This wasn’t surprising; Scott tended to be the most realistic—or cynical, depending on who you asked—in the family. He had run for Congress and lost and along the way tasted the allure and nastiness of public life. He had worked as a lawyer and as a lobbyist. He would sometimes tell people, "Hey, don’t kid yourself, I’m the asshole of the family." When Scott read the presentment, he called his father and said, "Dad, you have to face the possibility that you will never coach another game."

Joe thought his son was making too much of it. But he had not yet read the presentment. Scott had been getting word for weeks through his sources that the indictment was coming down, and that it was unimaginable. But even going over in his mind what might be the worst-case scenario didn’t prepare him for the twenty-three-page firebomb. It told a hideous story of a famous former coach, philanthropist, and community leader who used his access to troubled children and Penn State football resources to commit unthinkable crimes against children. As Scott struggled through the details, he grew angrier and angrier. He had known Sandusky for much of his life. He had showered in those athletic showers as a boy, with Sandusky undoubtedly in the same room. How was this possible? And the angrier he became, the more he understood that his own anger would be multiplied by the explosive reaction of millions of Americans who had never heard of Jerry Sandusky.

Those millions, most of them, had heard of Joe Paterno.

"Dad," he asked his father again, "did you know anything about Sandusky?"

"I didn’t hear anything, why are you badgering me? What do I know about Jerry Sandusky? I’ve got Nebraska to think about, I can’t worry about this." Nebraska was the next game.

"I had to do everything I could to not cry right then," Scott recalled.

Jay Paterno was on the road recruiting when he got the call from Scott. He asked, "How bad is it?" Scott said, "It’s worse than anything." Jay sat in his car in an Ohio gas station and stared into the darkness.

Still, Jay and others in the family clung to some hope that people would conclude Joe had been fooled like everyone else. After all, Joe was not a target of the investigation. Two other Penn State officials, Curley and the head of campus security, Gary Schultz, had been indicted on counts of perjury and failure to report. Shortly after the presentment came out, there was a story in the online edition of the Harrisburg Patriot-News with the headline PATERNO PRAISED FOR ACTING APPROPRIATELY IN REPORTING JERRY SANDUSKY SEX ABUSE SUSPICIONS. Multiple sources told reporter Sara Ganim that "the deputy state prosecutor handling the case said that Paterno did the right thing and handled himself appropriately in 2002 [later changed to 2001]."

Paterno was fired over the phone, sitting at his kitchen table late at night.

This, in the end, was what the family believed: that Joe Paterno had been told a vague story about a former football coach he didn’t particularly like or trust.3 Then, following the law and university policy and his own guiding light, he had reported what he was told to Tim Curley. He had not been charged with lying to the grand jury. If Jerry Sandusky was guilty, then hundreds of people had been fooled: child-care professionals, law-enforcement officials, co-workers at his charity, parents, judges, close friends of Sandusky, and many others. Those closest to Paterno believed that when he went public with what he knew and what he did, most people would understand he was fooled like everyone else. Joe Paterno believed the same thing.

Of course, there were those among the Paternos and their closest friends who wished Joe had followed up with more vigor after reporting to Curley and made sure there was a resolution. Penn State’s official response—not to call the police and merely to tell Sandusky not to bring children on campus—was sickeningly inadequate if McQueary had seen and described a rape. Many of the people who had come to admire Joe Paterno believed that, no matter his own legal role, he should have made sure the incident was reported to the police.

As reported in late June 2012, interoffice e-mails suggest Paterno had been told more about Sandusky than he recalled and had followed up, at least unofficially, with Curley.4 When some of the e-mails were released, there was a strong backlash against Paterno; many now believe he was involved in a Penn State cover-up.

2.Paterno is referring here to the 2001 sexual assault by Sandusky on an adolescent boy at a Penn State athletic facility, an incident that was witnessed by a graduate coaching assistant named Mike McQueary, who subsequently alerted Paterno about what he’d seen. Paterno insisted until his death that McQueary’s account was the flrst time he had ever heard about Sandusky behaving improperly with children. According to the Freeh report, however, and possibly in contradiction to his sworn grand jury testimony of January 2011, Paterno appears to have known about a 1998 police investigation into another incident involving Sandusky; no charges were flled in that case.

3.By the time of Sandusky’s retirement in 1999, Paterno and Sandusky’s relationship had deteriorated for a number of personal reasons. Their estrangement was an open secret on campus and among reporters covering the team.

4.According to the Freeh report, internal e-mails between Curley, Spanier, and Schultz suggest that the three men had initially agreed to alert child services about Sandusky until Paterno persuaded them to reconsider.

On the Saturday that the grand jury presentment went public, Penn State University president Spanier came to the house, sat at the kitchen table, and read to Paterno the statement he was going to release. Paterno told him the statement would do more harm than good: "I just didn’t like it. It struck me as a mistake." Spanier released it anyway.

The allegations about a former coach are troubling, and it is appropriate that they be investigated thoroughly. Protecting children requires the utmost vigilance.

With regard to the other presentments, I wish to say that Tim Curley and Gary Schultz have my unconditional support. I have known and worked daily with Tim and Gary for more than 16 years. I have complete confidence in how they have handled the allegations about a former University employee.

Tim Curley and Gary Schultz operate at the highest levels of honesty, integrity and compassion. I am confident the record will show that these charges are groundless and that they conducted themselves professionally and appropriately.

Paterno was right. The statement, particularly the part about "unconditional support" for Curley and Schultz, would set off a media already motivated to wonder what the heck was going on in Happy Valley.

The night he was fired, Paterno spoke to the students gathered outside his house.

On Sunday, Guido D’Elia, a close family adviser, returned from an out-of-town trip and went to the Paternos’ home. Like Scott, like millions, D’Elia had felt overwhelming rage when reading the presentment, and he had come to the conclusion that Joe would probably lose his job. Those feelings were confirmed when he learned that the university had cut off communication with the Paternos. There would be much back-and-forth later about who stopped talking first, who would not return whose phone calls, but in interviews almost every member of the Paternos’ immediate family said that they tried to start a dialogue with the university trustees and were rebuffed. Joe’s wife, Sue, said she called a couple of trustees. His daughter Mary Kay said she called three. And so on. Nobody responded. D’Elia saw the break as a terrible sign.

The Paternos decided to release a statement. It revealed their state of mind at the time: what Joe knew, when he knew it, what he tried to do about it. It was substantially the statement that several of Paterno’s advisers had wanted him to release back in March when the Sandusky investigation first broke. D’Elia deduced that it was probably too late now.

If true, the nature and amount of charges made are very shocking to me and all Penn Staters. While I did what I was supposed to with the one charge brought to my attention, like anyone else involved I can’t help but be deeply saddened these matters are alleged to have occurred.

Sue and I have devoted our lives to helping young people reach their potential. The fact that someone we thought we knew might have harmed young people to this extent is deeply troubling. If this is true, we were all fooled along with scores of professionals trained in such things, and we grieve for the victims and their families. They are in our prayers.

As my grand jury testimony stated, I was informed in 2002 by an assistant coach that he had witnessed an incident in the shower of our locker room facility. It was obvious that the witness was distraught over what he saw, but he at no time related to me the very specific actions contained in the Grand Jury report.

Regardless, it was clear that the witness saw something inappropriate involving Mr. Sandusky. As coach Sandusky was retired from our coaching staff at that time, I referred the matter to university administrators.

I understand that people are upset and angry, but let’s be fair and let the legal process unfold. In the meantime, I would ask all Penn Staters to continue to trust in what that name represents, continue to pursue their lives every day with high ideals and not let these events shake their beliefs nor who they are.

But D’Elia’s fears were confirmed: It was too late. Sunday was the day that television cameras began to surround the Paterno home on McKee Street.

On Monday, the family tried to persuade Paterno to read the presentment. He objected that he already knew what was in there, but they told him there was no room left for illusion. D’Elia would remember telling him, "You realize that the people out there think you knew about this? They think you had to know because you know about everything."

"That’s their opinion!" Paterno shouted. "I’m not omniscient!"

"They think you are!" D’Elia roared back.

Later, D’Elia described watching Paterno read the presentment: "What did he know about perverted things like that? When he asked Scott, ’What is sodomy, anyway?’ I thought my heart was going to break."

The attorney general of Pennsylvania, Linda Kelly, had been in office for only a few months. Her predecessor, Tom Corbett, had initiated the grand jury investigation of Sandusky more than two years earlier. He was now governor and would play a substantial role in what was to follow. On Monday, though, Kelly held a press conference to discuss the Sandusky indictment. When Paterno’s name came up, she was clear about his meeting his legal responsibility.5

However, the question had shifted: It was no longer about Paterno’s meeting his legal responsibility; it was, as one Paterno family member bitterly called it, "the Joe Paterno morality clause." Had Paterno done enough beyond the law? Had he used what so many people saw as his immense power to stop Jerry Sandusky? One of the people on the podium with Kelly was state police commissioner Frank Noonan. After the press conference ended, Noonan made his way out to the reporters. He had something to say: "Somebody has to question about what I would consider the moral requirements for a human being that knows of sexual things that are taking place with a child.... I think you have the moral responsibility, anyone. Not whether you’re a football coach or a university president or the guy sweeping the building. I think you have a moral responsibility to call us."

The story was charging toward Paterno at warp speed. Even if Noonan had not said anything at all, the question of whether Joe Paterno lived up to his moral responsibility would have been asked again and again, in offices and bars and churches across America. It would have been argued ceaselessly because he was Joe Paterno, the all-time winningest coach, and he had been celebrated for almost a half century as a man of integrity.

On Monday, Paterno coached practice while the media swarmed his home. He had a regularly scheduled Tuesday press conference, and when he got home he prepared what he would say. He intended to use that press conference to explain what he did and when he did it.

On Monday night, Penn State sent out a press release to the media stating that Paterno would answer questions only about football. Paterno said they never talked about it with him.

Scott Paterno told his mother, "I think you need to brace yourself. They could fire Dad."

"Scotty, that will kill him," she replied.

5.Kelly’s conclusion preceded the Freeh report. Because of its revelations about Paterno’s likely familiarity with the 1998 accusation, some legal experts have speculated that Paterno, had he survived longer, might have been subject to perjury charges for his January 2011 grand jury testimony, in which he said he was unaware of the incident.

Irate over Paterno’s ouster, students rioted on campus, overturning a TV truck.

Journalists began to line up outside the football stadium three hours before the press conference on Tuesday morning. On one side of the stadium, students rested and studied in the tent village they called "Paternoville," waiting for front-row seats to one of the biggest games of the year. Around the corner from Paternoville, journalists were camping out for front-row seats to the biggest press conference the school had ever had.

Back at the house on McKee Street, the family prepped Paterno for the press conference. It was not going well. He had never developed the talent for being concise. His whole life he had rambled. This was a charming quality when people were asking him about, say, Al Davis, and he started to talk about all the people who had grown up in Brooklyn. In this case, though, his ramblings made him sound unsure. Even in the short time he had spent before the grand jury, he had rambled. Here is his answer when asked if "fondling" was the right term to describe what McQueary had told him:

Well, I don’t know what you would call it. Obviously, he was doing something with the youngster. It was a sexual nature. I’m not sure exactly what it was. I didn’t push Mike to describe exactly what it was because he was very upset. Obviously, I was in a little bit of a dilemma since Mr. Sandusky was not working for me anymore. So I told—I didn’t go any further than that except I knew Mike was upset and I knew some kind of inappropriate action was being taken by Jerry Sandusky with the youngster.

One simple question led to all sorts of twists and turns of thought; there was a hint in there about his feelings toward Sandusky as a former employee, a bit about how McQueary hadn’t really gone into any detail, a suggestion that Paterno didn’t really know what had happened. Each of these could lead to a dozen other questions. Family and friends play-acted as reporters and fired questions at him: Did you know about 1998? What did McQueary tell you? Why didn’t you go to the police? Why didn’t you follow up? Paterno answered, got upset, answered again, rambled a bit more.

The reporters who knew Paterno best understood that this press conference was going to be a fiasco of the highest order. With his hearing problems, his age, his crankiness, and his susceptibility to talking around his answers, along with the blood-in-the-water media frenzy that was building, they knew this press conference would make things much worse for him. "It will be a living funeral," one reporter predicted, echoing words Paterno had used through the years.

McKee is a quiet, tree-lined street just off campus. The Paternos’ house is the last house on the left; it backs up into Sunset Park. For the next few days, the parking lot of Sunset Park was crowded with satellite trucks. Media people stood across the street, on a neighbor’s lawn, and pointed their cameras and their notepads at the front door of the house. Family members remembered looking out the window and seeing their neighbor raking autumn leaves in between the legs of camera tripods.

That night they called consultant Dan McGinn, whose job, in his own words, is "to help our clients solve their most complex problems." He had worked with Coca-Cola, Texaco, and General Motors. "I know why you’re calling," were the first words out of McGinn’s mouth.

When McGinn arrived at the house, the Paterno family and friends were almost physically holding Joe back from giving a press conference right then and there. McGinn made a couple of quick assessments: First, Paterno was in no shape to speak to the media; with the atmosphere this toxic, anything he said would make the situation much worse. Second, Paterno was going to have to retire; the damage had been too great.

This is when McGinn learned just how far Paterno’s influence and reputation had fallen. He asked D’Elia for the name of one person on the Penn State board of trustees, just one, whom they could reach out to, to negotiate a gracious ending. D’Elia shook his head.

"One person on the board, that’s all we need," McGinn said.

D’Elia shook his head again. "It began in 2004," he whispered, referring to an old clash Paterno had with Spanier. "The board started to turn. We don’t have anybody on the board now."

That’s when McGinn realized that this was going to be the worst day of Joe Paterno’s professional life. The family released the statement in which Paterno attempted to retire at the end of the season, but within an hour the news stories were reporting that the board might not give him the chance.

Fran Ganter, who had played for Paterno at Penn State and coached with him for more than thirty years, showed up at the Paterno house just before 10 p.m. Wednesday night with a single piece of Penn State stationery. Later Ganter would tell friends he did not know what was written on it.

Printed on the paper was a single name, John Surma, and a phone number. Surma was the CEO of U.S. Steel and the Penn State board’s vice chairman. Paterno picked up the phone and called the number.

"This is Joe Paterno."

"This is John Surma. The board of trustees have terminated you effective immediately."

Paterno hung up the phone before he could hear anything else.

A minute later, Sue called the number. "After sixty-one years," she said, her voice cracking, "he deserved better." And then she hung up.

The campus was overrun with emotion. A riot broke out, several students were videotaped overturning a television truck, more than thirty-five people were charged. Penn State students would be mocked for, as one news site put it, "rioting over the firing of a child-molester enabler." Students gathered in front of Paterno’s house, and Joe and Sue came out briefly, he in a gray sweatshirt, she in a red bathrobe. His short speech to the students was quintessential Paterno, filled with raw emotion and winding roads:

I want to say hello to all these great students who I love. You guys are great, all of you—when I say "guys," you know what I mean, you know I mean girls, too. Hey look, get a good night’s sleep, all right? Study, all right? We’ve still got things to do. I’m out of it, maybe now. That phone call put me out of it. We’ll go from here, okay? Good luck, everybody. Thanks. Thank you! And one thing: Thanks. And pray a little bit for those victims.

On Thursday, Paterno met with his coaches at his house. He sobbed uncontrollably. This was his bad day. Later, one of his former captains, Brandon Short, stopped by the house. When Brandon asked, "How are you doing, Coach?" Paterno answered, "I’m okay," but the last syllable was shaky, muted by crying, and then he broke down and said, "I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself." Nobody knew how to handle such emotion. Joe had always seemed invulnerable. On Thursday, though, he cried continually.

"My name," he told Jay, "I have spent my whole life trying to make that name mean something. And now it’s gone."

When Friday came, though, Joe was different. The crying was over. Nobody would ever see him cry again. Nobody would see him discouraged again. "It was like a transformation," Mary Kay said. "He had one bad day. But after that, he was positive."

"You know what?" Joe said. "I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. Are you kidding? I’ve lived a great life. Healthy children. Healthy grandchildren. Loving wife. I look around the world and see people who have real problems, serious problems. I’m the luckiest guy."

A few days later, it was announced that Paterno had lung cancer. He had not felt well for a few weeks, but he would not have gone to see the doctor had he still been coaching. In their press release, the family described it as "treatable." They always did hope for the best.

"We had been through so much," Sue Paterno recalled. "And I always thought, in the end, we would win."

From the forthcoming book Paterno by Joe Posnanski, to be published by Simon Schuster in August 2012. Copyright &#xA9; 2012 by Joe Posnanski. Reprinted by permission.

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